Every game has a beta stage.
It's a rough test game before the final version is completed. The games
always receive changes before they are completed. But in the case of Goldeneye
007, an unusual amount of changes were made. Many options were lost, such
as characters, levels, items, cheats, as well as objectives. These sections
are dedicated to the many things removed from the game, when it was in
the beta stage.
The remaining Beta info, that
I haven't classed above, as well as other important things are below:
I've found an actual "Beta
Video", featuring the old KF7, Sean Connery, and Blackhawk Magnum.
Download it from my Video
Downloads section.
One
of the aspects of the game's beta stage, was the fact that all guards
were programmed with the "scarface" head. This was of course not intended
to be left, it was just how the game was setup at that time. After that,
they were all given blond heads, before being set up to be given random
heads each time you play.
There
was once a working elevator in the Silo. You can't tell very well, but I
got these screens of a promo video. It's Bond riding the Silo elevator,
going up in the silo.
If you want to see
it for yourself, you can download and watch it in my Video
Downloads section.
This
shot shows the weird holding of the AR33, a different AR33, and
the Jungle Commando in the Silo. Maybe he was one of the first
enemies; The digit 00 in Gameshark is for his uniform, so it's
likely.
I wonder why he doesn't
have a scar-face. Notice how this walkway doesn't go anywhere.
No door. It's directly off the elevator, which can partially be
seen in the left shot.
The
Bunker's screen, as well as every other computer screen in the game,
had the James Bond silhouette on it. This was sent to me, scanned
from Issue 93 of Nintendo Power. I'm still baffled as to why the
enemy would have Bond's pic on the screen, and why he would have
to photograph it. I'm assuming it was planned as just a temporary
fill, until the replacement images were made.
Mentioned
in my Beta Facility section, but being that it's such a "famous"
picture, I've included it here. The tanks are stacked, except
for the two at the very end. There's also no fog. The guards all
have heads, that are the blond guy with the crooked smile. I wish
Rare would have left the tanks like this though! They look so
much better.
Just
one small thing that went by me unnoticed. This screenshot, from
Rare's website, shows the shotgun in the inventory. But closer
inspection shows that there are six menu bars to select, instead
of the five that there are now.
This
could be a real screenshot, but I think it's probably two of them
pasted together, including a shot of the watch, and another one
of Connery. But WAIT... what's that TT33 weapon? (zoomed in pic)
An old gun? I know it's the DD44, whose name in real life is the
TT33. It's down the bottom of the weapons, where the DD44 actually
appears, so I'm sure that's what it is. Now we know that the DD44
is another gun that underwent a name change, before the game was
finished. And, the name PPK that's above it. The Walther PPK,
just like in the movie.
It's highly likely,
that at one time, ALL of the games guns featured their real names,
before they were changed to protect copyrights.
From
the evidence I've gathered, Bond wore the blue suit in most (if
not all) levels, even the Facility, image
with the Rocket Launcher,
we can see a white cuff, which could be only from this suit. Another
temporary thing, until the rest of the suits were programmed into
the game.
I
just thought that I'd add this picture of the Blackhawk Magnum to
my beta section. This picture also happens to have Sean Connery
being shot at. The Magnum's name was changed due to the copyright
attached to it's name. We all know that the gun is now called the
Cougar Magnum.
The
Streets level. It looks like the level is snowed over. I think this
isn't a game screenshot, but more of an artwork to base the level
on. I've found this shot on Rare's site also, and it was taken from
a Rare computer. So everything could just be white because textures
weren't filled in.
These
aren't beta pictures, but I've included them anyway, because the
mysterious island is still an interesting part of the game.
You can use the GS no
clipping code, or get out of Bond code on the actual dam, and
you can fly to the tower, and make it seem that you're actually
inside the tower. That's how the right pic was made. For extensive
Island information, with loads of screenshots, check out my Dam
Island Section.
This
picture is from the instruction booklet, and the character seen
in the top right appears to be Sean Connery, wearing Bond's white
suit from Goldfinger. It's the only real game screenshot there
is in the entire booklet, and it's from the Beta stages. The booklet
was obviously printed out before the game was even close to being
finished. So was the box.
The
picture on the left is the character select screen, that I scanned
from the Instruction Booklet. Notice how the characters are in
a different order than they are in the final game's character
screen. That's not a big deal, but wait, who's that character
on the bottom left of the bottom screen, to the left of Boris?
It looks like Sean Connery.
It
was hard to tell when it was scanned, so I made an enlarged picture
of it. (top right) It's definitely a picture of Sean Connery, compare
it to the Gameshark picture (left). He seems to be the only Bond
to be in numerous pictures of the earlier versions of Goldeneye.
That's why I think he was deleted much later, after the rest of
the former Bonds.
And I've finally discovered the meaning of the characters in
a different order. There are Gameshark codes to change each picture,
and each picture has a hexadecimal digit. The digits in order
go the same as the characters are pictured above.
00 Pierce Brosnan
01 Roger Moore
02 Timothy Dalton
03 Sean Connery
04 Boris
05 Ourumov
06 Trevelyan
07 Valentin
08 Xenia
09 Natalya
0A Baron Samedi
0B Jaws
0C Mayday
0D Oddjob
0E Question Mark
0F Mishkin
You can see by the list I've made with each pictures hex value.
Put in correct hex order, they follow the same pattern as the
above screenshot. This explains the order of the characters above.
So according to this, Moore and Dalton would have been in the
picture above, but they were simply off screen.
They character orders were changed, probably to a more correct
order with the main characters selectable first.
Thanks to Ian Rogers for getting me to have a look at this. Without
him, I would have never even thought of checking the hex values.
.
Final
Thoughts
It's
too bad that some of the things from the Beta
stages were deleted, because lots of them
would have made the game more fun. But if
they were included, we'd just take them for
granted and never think twice about it. How
special do you think Jaws and Baron Samedi
are? If they weren't there, but were Multiplayer
characters, we'd want them just as bad as
Oddjob and Mayday. The Citadel could be no
more special than the Caves. But if the Caves
were replaced, we would have wished that it
wasn't.